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A bit stuck on where to take my app next

After my employer went remote early last year, I quickly became frustrated with the "whiteboard" tools we were using to conduct some parts of coding interviews. I have a lot of experience making web-based drawing tools and I thought I could do a better job, so I spent a couple months building an MVP and called it Browserboard.

My goals for the project are very modest. I don't intend to go full time on it; ideally I'll put in about 5-10 hours per month and grow very slowly if at all, while bringing some unique value to the world.

The trouble I'm having now is, I achieved my original vision and now it's time to start specializing and addressing specific user needs. But my time commitment isn't compatible with intensive customer research, and I'm a lot more motivated by coding than by growing. Another snag is I like my full-time job and I want to continue to be 100% focused on my job during business hours.

Here are some relevant facts:

  • Based on information I gather at the whiteboard creation stage, my classes of users in order of decreasing size are: educators, students, people messing around for fun, and people having meetings over Zoom.
  • I've had tiny but consistent traffic for most of the last year, up until March 22nd, when it spiked to about 250 hits per day. In internet terms that's still tiny but it's a start. I haven't been able to figure out where the spike came from; Google Analytics can't tell me.
  • There are many web-based whiteboards serving different customers. I believe there is always room for one more in this space.
  • My costs are only about $40/mo, which is why I'm comfortable keeping the site free indefinitely.
  • I've solved some key problems with drawing that most whiteboards get wrong, specifically around how the eraser works. Drawing is my strength, text is my weakness (for now).
  • I've gotten about 4 serious requests to integrate Browserboard into some other project, but none have panned out so far for various reasons.
  • There is a company (Ziteboard) that basically fulfills the original vision I had for the project, until last month when I discovered this company exists. Our feature set is a little different but their feature set around the tool (other than the drawing) is basically the roadmap I had in mind. I want to avoid just making a worse but free version of Ziteboard, and make something different from it instead.
  • Browserboard requires no user accounts at all to use, which no other commercial whiteboard seems willing to do.

So, what would you do if you were me?

on April 12, 2021
  1. 1

    Quick update: I added some analytics and figured out that I'm ranking very highly for "online whiteboard" on Bing, and about 3000 people per week are actually using the site! Seeing this gave me motivation to start to reach out to users again, and I'm learning a lot and building new features. I just needed another spark to take the next step.

  2. 1

    I'd seek for a person who would take the "talking to users" part and converting it to user stories. This would be at least some confirmation of what you are coding is actually needed.

    Other approach is to find the features by yourself. Build what is interesting to you for your professional growth. Thus, you'd be exploring new things in a relaxed manner (without deadlines). Just enjoying that you are totally free in your product.

    In any case, I'd definitely keep the product and keep being active at communities involving your target audience. It would feel amazing, understanding that your product is used by people you connect.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the advice! I really appreciate it.